


Dreams and Nightmares

by Reeny



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien gets bamboozled, Angst, Episode: s03 Ladybug, Gen, Kwami Swap, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Transfers Schools, No beta we die like mne, Peacock Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Tagging as I go, ml salt, some class/adrien salt but nothing too crazy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24423988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reeny/pseuds/Reeny
Summary: A canon divergence of Ladybug: Ladybug loses her earrings but manages to keep her identity hidden. Sentibug takes her place, with Chat Noir none the wiser. With no trace of Master Fu, Marinette has to find her own way out of this mess. At least at first.
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Duusu, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Félix Graham de Vanily, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug & Kagami Tsurugi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Dreams and Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr!
> 
> https://l-reeny-l.tumblr.com

Two weeks. It had been two weeks, since her life come crashing down on her, leaving her lying on the curb, alone.

It had all started harmless enough, just another day of Lila spinning the most baseless, unbelievable lies that anyone could ever imagine. No one should've been able to fall for them.   
  
Except they did.

All of them.

They looked at the poorly crafted construct of outlandish claims, sloppily placed "evidence" and questionable accusations that Lila had presented them and decided that it fit with their mental image of Marinette.

Maybe she shouldn't be surprised. Her class had never been a particularly close group of friends, most of them preferring to keep to themselves, before Hawk Moths appearance. She hd been forced to face Chloé on her own for years, without even so much as a word from her teachers, let alone her peers.

And considering how quick her supposed friends were to turn on Adrien during the "Félix incident" just a couple weeks ago, she probably really should have expected this.

It had taken some prompting from her for Adrien to come to her defense when Lila was accusing her of stealing her necklace, and even when he did, it didn't last long, with just one word from the principal being enough to shut him down.

She had felt betrayed, back then. Angry even. But in hindsight she couldn't really be mad at Adrien. He was sheltered. Not even two years had passed since he joined their school, and he didn't even attend class for a good third of that time, too buisy with work for his father to fully experinence what school was really like. He saw the way they treated her and must've been afraid of receiving the same treatment. At this point she couldn't even blame him. And it's not like they were particularly close, as much as it would've pained her to admit that back then. In his eyes, she probably just wasn't worth risking the ire of the entire class. Not that it mattered now. She got expelled and she was done with him. She was done with all of them.

Even her parents. 

Out of all of them, their distrust had hurt the most. Didn't they remember all the things she had to endure from Chloé? All the times she came home crying because of another cruel prank? How could they believe that she would ever wish these things on someone else? And when had they ever known her to be a cheater? She knew that she messed up sometimes, whether it be due to her being a bit of a scatterbrain or her occasional inpulsiveness, and with being ladybug she had been forced to tell a couple white lies here and there, but she would never intentionally hurt someone! 

They should know this!

But she supposed it couldn't be helped.

She had more pressing matters to attend to.

Like the fact that Mayura had managed to take her earrings.

As if her day hadn't already been bad enough, the peacock villain had decided to show her face with a Ladybug clone in tow, forcing Marinette to storm out on her already pretty upset parents. She really hadn't meant to anger them even more, but with Chat Noir not exactly having the best track record regarding hero impersonators, she really didn't want to risk him getting fooled.

Maybe she should have.

The day already had been pretty cloudy, but by the time she had arrived at the scene to confront Mayura it was as if the sky had ripped open. Combined with her exhaustion from the day she'd had, the odds hadn't really been in her favour.

By the time Chat Noir joined the fight, they had already moved through half the city towards the Seine and the impostor Ladybug, or Sentibug as Mayura called her, had the real Ladybug tied up with her yoyo, Mayura slipping just out of sight to aviod being detected by the new comer.

Marinette had screamed and pleaded for him to help her, to not let himself get tricked by Mayura, but in the end Sentibug had him wrapped around her finger, distracting him well enough to be oblivious to Mayura sneaking up to the struggeling Ladybug and forcefully ripping out her earrings, shortly before receiving a sharp kick to the stomach as Marinette, in a last ditch efford to protect her identity, threw the woman off her and rolled herself into the murky waters of the river below her.

She didn't remember much after that. Just a faint echo of stinging ears and burning lungs as she tried to stay afloat, with the yoyos string still tightly wrapped around her upper body. There was yelling and she recalled strong arms wrapping around her. Shortly after feeling solid ground beneat her body, she had passed out.

When she came to, she had found herself in an unfamiliar environment. In a panicked haze she had tried to escape, but was quickly intercepted by a less than impressed Kagami.

Apparently, the stoic girl had saved Marinette from certain death, by jumping into the Seine and dragging her back to shore to perform some basic cpr, before instructing her driver to take them both to the Tsurugi estate to have their private doctor asses the situation.

In the end Marinette was left with slightly less angry parents, stitches in her earlobes, no miraculous, no school and a nasty cold.

And now, here she was, drenched in sweat and looking like a mess, trying to coax a pair of crows into letting her have a look at their newest toy. She had spent the past two weeks in constant paranoia, always on the lookout for akumas and/or either of the resident super villains.

While she was fairly certain that Mayura never actually managed to get a proper look at Marinettes face, one could never be too careful. She had swapped her signature pigtails for a simple half ponytail and limited her clothing options to casual sportswear in neutral colours, trying to look as inconspicupus as possible, while also always being ready to make a run for it.

She scattered a handful of cookie crumbs on the ground, but neither of the birds seemed to be interested.

Marinette had put every single second of her freetime scouring the city for Master Fu's hiding spot of the day, but without the help of her lucky charm she was lost.

Once or twice the thought of waving down Chat Noir had crossed her mind, but there hadn't really been any akumas lately, and when the cat hero was seen, it was always in the company of his brand new sentimonster girlfriend.

Marinette scoffed bitterly.

How he still hadn't caught on to the situation was beyond her. It was true that he has always been a dreamer, especially when it came to Ladybug, but she had always hoped, no, believed that he would be able to come through when the situation called for it.

Evidently, she had either severely overestimated his intelligence, or underestimated his infatuation with her hero persona.

She dug through her bag, searching for something else that could potentially capture a crows interest.

In the end, she supposed that her and her partner simply weren't as close as they thought they were.

Still, she was worried about him. What was Hawk Moth planning? Why hadn't the sentimonster taken Chats ring yet? Why was it even still here? Were they waiting for Chat to lead them to the Guardian? And if so, how come there haven't been any akumas? Nothing was making sense and it was stressing her out. She hated being unprepared.

Her fingers bumped into a piece of plastic and she pulled it out. It was the lucky charm Adrien had made for her.

Looking at it used to fill her with a warm and fuzzy feeling, but now it just made her sad.

With a resolute nod, she carefully crept forward and offered the beaded string to the two birds in front of her, giving encouraging whispers and slightly jiggeling her hand, trying to make the lucky charm look as appealing as she could.

To her surprise, it actually seemed to work. One of the crows hopped a bit closer, while the other watched her from a safe distance.

She slowly lowered the charm to the ground and scooted back a bit, trying to appear as harmless as possible. Then, almost too fast to process, the bird cosest to her shot foward, snatched the beads up and brought them back to their friend. 

After a quick inspection of their new toy, the two broke out in a playful game of tug, which then turned into a round of catch, leaving their old plaything and Marinette behind.

Said girl had pulled out a paper handkerchief and was currently holding her breath, as her shaking hands carefully wrapped up the abandoned piece pf jewlery. At this point, she was convinced that she was going insane, the stress of recent events finally getting to her. When she woke up this morning, she had been feeling restless, like she was supposed to be somewhere else. She had tried to clear her head by going for a run, but in the end she just couldn't fight this weird pull she was feeling. It had chased her through the parisian streets for hours, before finally leading her into an unfamiliar public park. There, she aimlessly wandered around for a bit, before finally stumbling upon the two crows.

At first, she didn't believe what she was seeing. And to be honest, she still couldn't. Why would the peacock miraculous be in a place like this? That is, if this even was the peacock miraculous. Maybe it was just an ordinary brooch and this had all been a coincidence. What were the odds of Mayura just... just loosing her miraculous?? But then again, what where the odds of her just randomly finding an exact replica? What if it was a trap? It seemed unlikely, but Hawk Moth wasn't exactly known for being a mastermind. So far no one had jumped out on her, but she decided to play it safe on her way back home, pushing herself through any larger crowd she could find, taking as many unexpected turns as possible and even going so far as to slip into a small thrift shop to find herself a new set of clothes to change into.

Maybe she was over reacting.

Who could blame her though? Hawkmoth might've not bothered with Chloé much, but Marinette would much rather be over prepared, than be completely helpless in the face of disaster. 

Except it seemed that she hadn't been prepared that well at all. If she had been, she probably wouldn't be in this situation right now and- she stopped herself. Breaking her head over what would've or could've been wouldn't help her. She had to focus on the now.

Her hand slipped into her pocket, carefully sliding over the little bundle she had made. It almost felt hot to the touch. She pulled her hand back. Even if the brooch truly was what she believed it to be, it would do no good to accidentally activate it out in the open. She had to be patient.

When she finally reached the bakery, she barely managed to present her parents with a somewhat believable excuse as to why she'd been out so late, before hastily making her way up into her room, nearly tripping on the stairs twice.

After double and triple checking that the trapdoor was firmly locked and all her blinds were securely in place, she sat down in the middle of her floor and pulled out the wrapped up brooch.

With shaking hands she slowly unfolded the handkerchief, almost dropping it a couple times. 

There was no bright light or whirling around like there had been with Tikki. In fact, there was nothing at all. Even the subtle warmth it had been giving off before had disappeared.

"Huh."

So it seemed she really had just been imagining things... but then how did-

And just like that the brooch increases in temperature again, growing so hot that she had to drop it onto a plate that she had meant to bring down into the kitchen for days now.

The little fan of feathers was flickering and giving off sparks, and Marinette had half a mind to just throw it out of the window, in case it caught fire. She was about to go fetch a cup of water to try qnd cool it down a bit, when it finally managed to produce a roughly fist sized ball of light, and all but spit a small blue creature at her. She scrambled to catch it before it could hit the ground, carefully cradling it in her hands as she tried to get a better look at the face of what undoubtedly was a kwami.

Dark blue tail feathers with pink accents started twitching, as the small being slowly lifted it head to blink at her with dazed eyes.

"Who are you?"

**Author's Note:**

> This took me way longer to write than I'd like to admit, lmao
> 
> I wrote all of this on my phone, so if the formatting is weird, that's why ^^'
> 
> I hope you liked it! Comments are always appreciated!!


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